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The Awakening
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories: Stories of Freedom, Desire, and Constraint
When The Awakening appeared in 1899, critics condemned it as scandalous, even dangerous. More than a century later, it stands as one of the most courageous works in American literature—a lyrical and uncompromising portrait of a woman discovering her own voice.
In this new annotated edition, Celia Harrow provides a forward that situates Chopin’s work within its historical, cultural, and feminist contexts. Harrow traces how The Awakening and Chopin’s finest short stories—Beyond the Bayou, Ma’ame Pélagie, Désirée’s Baby, The Story of an Hour, A Respectable Woman, The Kiss, A Pair of Silk Stockings, The Locket, and A Reflection—form a coherent exploration of freedom, identity, and the social boundaries that shape women’s lives.
Across bayous and parlors, city streets and quiet rooms, Chopin reveals the inner landscapes of women navigating love, race, class, and convention. Her heroines awaken not only to passion but to the cost of self-knowledge.
Richly annotated and elegantly presented, this edition invites twenty-first-century readers to rediscover Chopin as a writer of extraordinary subtlety, courage, and contemporary resonance.
Author Bio
Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was one of the most original and daring voices in late nineteenth-century American literature. Born Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri, she grew up in a French-speaking, Catholic household shaped by strong women after the early death of her father. In 1870 she married Oscar Chopin, a wealthy cotton merchant, and moved to Louisiana, where she immersed herself in the Creole and Cajun cultures that later furnished the rich settings of her fiction.